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Click on images to enlarge them Kazakstan Map Click here for the story of our adoption experience   Bearded Kazak Man Kazak wedding couple Kazak children Kazak dancers Kazak horseman Pilau Yurt: portable dwelling Dombra player Kostanay Rudny Orphanage Russian cuisine Russian faces Russian dancer Russian instruments Russian dolls Patron Saint Click here for my Baptism photos Click on this link for more Kazakstan information: http://www.kazakinfo.com

Photo of Aleks at the Rudny orphanage after he received a package we sent him Aleksander's Story I was born in the country of Kazakstan, in the town of Kostanay on March 18, 1999.  When I was two years old I was left at an orphanage, and that is where I was when my Mom and Dad found me.  I don't know for certain about my background, but where I am from in that region of Kazakstan, most of the people are of Russian descent.  So here's the Russian-Kazak part of my story. Kazakstan symbols CENTRAL ASIA & THE KAZAKS ------------------------------------------------ Central Asia is perhaps the best place on earth to explore the reality of the phrase "the sweep of history."  There in the middle of the largest landmass on earth are the vast steppes or arid grasslands that stretch from Mongolia in the east to Hungary in the west.  This was the highway across millennia for nomadic horseback peoples that flowed back and forth across these lands.  Not much is known about the early inhabitants of this part of the world because these nomads traveled light and thus left behind very little evidence.  From the west came waves of Turkic peoples, then later from the east came the origins of the largest empire ever formed with Jenghiz Khan and the Mongols.  Today's Kazaks are descendants of these early peoples of the 13th century. 'Kazak' is a Turkic word meaning free rider, adventurer, outlaw which is what the Kazaks were to their settled neighbors in the south, the Uzbeks.  Confusingly, the Russians used the same word to refer to the Cossacks, an entirely different group of free riders.  In the late 15th and 16th centuries the Kazaks established one of the world's last great nomadic empires.  The Kazaks remained nomadic horseback pastoralists until the 1920s and a majority still live in rural areas.  This long legacy of a people on the move defines Kazak culture.  In music, for example, the Kazak national instrument seen most often is the dombra, a small two stringed lute with an oval, guitar or rectangular box shape.  It small size and light weight made it the preferred instrument for a people on the move.  Today it still serves as the foundation of Kazak folk music as skilled singers or barbs called akyns use this to accompany there sung verses.  Their songs are the oral literature of a people through the generations.  Constant movement required portable housing, and the Kazaks developed the yurt or large tent-like dwelling.  The people's nomadic roots are also reflected in the food culture.  Nomads eat the food most readily available, and in most cases this meant horses and sheep that were abundant on the grassland steppe.  In the main cities and northern Kazakstan, where I am from, Russian cuisine is prevalent reflecting the tastes of the immigrant culture.   Russian alphabet RUSSIAN EMIGRATION ------------------------------------ Harassed by outsiders in the 18th century, Kazaks entered into an alliance with what they considered the lesser of two evils, Tsarist Russia.  A century later Russia had succeeded in consolidating political control of the region.  Movement of Russian peasant settlers into Kazakstan was stimulated by the abolition of serfdom in 1861; by the 1890s one million Russians had relocated to northern Kazakstan.  The Soviet Communist revolution of the early 20th century soon began to reshape Kazakstan.  The world's biggest group of semi-nomadic people were forced to give up their old ways and settle down as farmers in collectives.  In 1936 Kazakstan was made a full Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR. More and more people from other parts of the USSR were resettled in Kazakstan to work in its new industrial cities through the 1930s and 40s.  In the 1950s a new wave of around 800,000 migrants arrived when the Soviets declared a new experiment to grow wheat in northern Kazakstan.  Then more came arrived to mine and process Kazakstan's reserves of coal, iron and oil.  My birthplace, Kostanay, was one of the new industrial cities created by the Soviets.    My given birth names are Aleksander Kazakov, so I think I am of Russian descent.  In the orphanage at Rudny (an hour from Konstanay) I learned to speak Russian.  Right now I'm working on learning English since my family here doesn't do too well with Russian.  So that's the background story of a Russian boy who was born in Kazakstan who made his way to America.  I do like my tricycle. First photo together--LAX January 21, 2004